Re: Roles of Madness. Mafia Thread
Final thoughts:
Taken from dead thread:
My end game notes seem to be a growing list of "Mistakes"
* Using dreams to balance the mafias power as a 6th power role
* Dreams being cryptic
* Dreams wildness acctually hurting mafia
(Umbrella - Dreams = trainwreck)
* Necromage : nice custom role, too powerful in rolemadness
* Day cop - No defense against it, probably not so smart
* 2 Doctors - Originally they were both faith healers (50% chance to work. 0 if targeted same person), then 1 became a saint and one a doctor, probably shouldnt of done that
* Hammerer - I like that role and think it's quite powerful as it causes a physcological strain, espically if you can hide it/let it fire well. As mafia seemed to get homed in on so fast it was acctually determinetal and should probably of been a switch mechanic (can choose to secretly hammer)
* Missioniary - I like that role, as an alt win condition "Predict whos not going to get nk'd or lynched" just oozes with "how good can you read the game". The mafia getting lynched out so quickly, as well as a bad pick, and so many kills happening at once made it not the best role for this game
* PGO, where art thou? - My fave role, and I didn't include it, why? Because I was sure the mafia was powerful enough with dreams I didn't need it to balance out town. Without the PGO the town roles were just too strong I like. (PGO for those who don't know passivly kill anyone who target them at night.) I did include a nexus that also bounced kills (wards didnt get redirected from it's passive effect), but it only got targeted once, and the effect was inconsequencal.
* NK Immune SK - SKs balance out anti-town factions by crossfire, NK immune so he can't be killed, turned out dreams werent the balancing act they were meant to be, so I accidently slammed mafia a bit more as they can't strike back. Well the SK didn't touch them, he didnt touch any town PRs ethier really.
* Rolethief - Intended as a wildcard, and hopefully would allow mafia to steal some town power roles...guess what? Just got used as an information role.
What I learned:
When people say "Role madness is impossible to balance" they bloody well meant it, granted the experiment with dreams as a factional ability fell flat on it's face, but there ya go. Also I should of kept in more "quasi-power" roles like "dream readers" and such. I know I said I wanted to try everyone having a powerful power role, but it just didn't work as you saw, the balance I saw and set up took a nose dive as soon as key mafia members bit the dust.
Originally the set up had in it: AT: A role destroyer, Dream scryer, Rolecop/roleblocker hybrid, redriector, seducer
PT: had different, Vote stealer/2x voter combo, govoner (can stop lynches), vengful and bomb were 2 seperate roles rather than the now standard 1 role, the power theif was 1 shot and copied the role rather than stealing it. 2 more custom roles: Mime Artist (50% chance to copy any action used on them back at the person) [became the blessed child instead], and random of all trades where the action you could use changed each night, but you didn't know what, so you'd send in a cop, kill, track and some other request and get 1 of them triggering. [became necromage]
The paladin originally was a night cop and could only test who the SK was
The ranger originally had a day kill power.
The faith healers originally could only protect against mafia kills, there was a posion healer who could stop only sk kills, they were merged to make them less narrow, something that again upset the balance.
Final thoughts: Yeah I messed up big time, and if I was to do another similar game (That is one w/o vanillia/french vanillia townies) I wouldnt work so hard making everyone have uber-power power roles. I'd give some people weakish roles but also a mason buddy or something to spice them up, or a hybrid role of 2 sucky powers. Also things like hammerer for anti-town, making it worse to make it better.
I hope I didn't ruin too many peoples enjoyment of the game, and I REALLY once again apologise to the mafia for grossly over-estimating not only the power of dreams, but also how much they could **** with cop roles with Autti and Korals powers. I have learned from these mistakes and I think a failed pratical run means 500x more than any ammount of theory running.
Any thoughts, good or bad don't be afraid to blast me with them. Any questions feel free to ask.
And I hope you'll all join my next game whenever that may be (Im guessing 4-5-6 months time)
Also never used day roles before this game, never will do again, or at least not day cop. Day cop is silly, because of wordings on roleblockers, day roles tend to be immune to them ("block all night actions" vs day actions)
Another mistake was changing it to a day effect.
Basically I made a lot of assumptions based around dreams mechanic that turned out to be wrong, the original set up with the dreamer being a person and not "the 6th man" who didn't exist was vastly different. A lot of the roles I used in this I would never do again, or in very specific set ups (Saint without a doc for example). Also everyone seemed to slander the lighting rod (Martyr role), I like it, it can create 2 death proof players with the doc too, but that aside it's just a bodyguard that can also stop roleblocks as well as kills. *shrug*
EDIT: About Laarz's role, Gwahir could pass a ward to him no problem, kills got reflected, I decided early on if the SK and Laarz were alive and only them 2 alive the SK won.
Anyway critisms are welcome, this was an experiment and a failed one at that so I deserve a lot of bashing, like I said I learned my lesson and of all the sites Ive hosted on this has been my biggest fail game. I just hope you'll all give me another chance in the future.
-RE
I look forward to my policy lynch next game
